I think it's in incorrect to say that they're "weeded out". That implies that women are being removed from the field, rather than exercising their own agency and choosing different fields.
That's simply the language used when a freshman takes some intro courses, feels overwhelmed or disinterested, and then chooses to change majors early on. Very few freshman actually fail their classes and get ejected from the university, they just realize they are paying a huge premium to learn something they feel they don't want to or can't keep up with.
But yes, I agree that if we're focusing on the problem at the hiring lever you're way too late. But that's the mentality of publicly shared companies that simply want a good shareholder report next quarter. Investing in middle schoolers takes years to reap what is sown.
If we accept this as true, fields dominated by women should receive the same grace.
Discrimination is never ok. If a woman applies to a job as a developer, she should absolutely not be discriminated against because of her gender.
Self-selection is always ok. If women in aggregate are more interested in biology than computer science, that is fine.
This paper is evidence of discrimination, not self-selection.
Do you think there is something innate in women that makes them less interested in computer science? Personally I find that extremely unlikely. The only other explanation for why they would self-select away from tech is that they feel they're being told to. That might be fine by you, but I think it's a problem.
Why? Do you believe that men and women are biologically differentiated, but mentally identical?
If so, do you also not believe in transgender identity, as the entire concept is rooted in there existing a mental difference between genders?
Half the top comments on this very thread decry DEI efforts while calling this wrong without the slightest hint of irony.
We're not hand-waving away discrimination as self selection. If we saw higher call back rates among male applications as compared to identical female applications then there would be a case for discrimination. When we study the call-back rates in tech companies, the results typically show no bias and sometimes show bias in favor of women [1].
What's happening is that people are alleging discrimination on account of nothing except for disparities in representation in tech. You're right: tech shouldn't be any different. Do we conclude that veterinarians must be rife with anti-male discrimination because they're 80% women? Why do we make the same arguments about tech?
Computer science: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-the-declinin...
Electrical engineering: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_325.45.a...
Mechanical engineering: https://www.bu.edu/eng/about/dean-lutchen/engineerings-gende....
> Which matches the rates at which women indicate tech as their preferred field in high school and middle school.
> This is down from 11 percent from a similar survey in 2018. Teen boys’ interest in STEM careers increased to 27 percent, up from 24 percent in 2018.
https://www.govtech.com/education/Female-Interest-in-STEM-Ed...
There is no free will. Society implanting ideas about which jobs you are capable of succeeding at is an especially obvious case of this. Why do you think women are going into different fields?
1. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more...
Then why do you think girls are self selecting away from computer science? Unless you believe they are somehow biologically wired to enjoy tech less it has to be because they're receiving messaging that causes them to believe they will enjoy it less than other fields relative to boys, right? I guess from your link you're going for the "women are biologically wired to enjoy math based professions less" but I find that difficult to buy
> This is a disparity that persists despite ample efforts to try and encourage girls to go into tech.
I certainly agree with this, it's just not working. It's quite clear that we are trying very hard to message to girls that they can succeed, but for whatever reason it doesn't seem to be getting through convingly, since there's still such a huge disparity.
> Then why do you think girls are self selecting away from computer science?
Why do you think? Hypothesize. Do you think women/girls today are being told in-large they're too dumb or stupid to do such? (Especially considering girls actually get better test scores and grades than boys from an early age - choose whatever reason you want for that existing but it is the case)
It really isn't the case. Women choose other things because they're interested in other things. A lot of women don't want to work in STEM or tech because it's not particularly sexy. The ones who do work in it usually don't find it sexy but are instead, "Yeah, I'm pretty nerdy and into nerdy stuff. So, this is what I like to do." but most women aren't like that. A lot of social factors are involved but overall - women are known for being more social than men and STEM is very well known for being the least social of about any major field you could go into. Why would you go into something that wasn't very social unless you were less social yourself?
It doesn't add up. If you acknowledge men and women are different then you have to acknowledge there are biological reasons for why some people might prefer some other things than others. If you don't acknowledge any differences then you must not believe sexual orientation is real - in which case, you're fucking crazy.
Millions of years of sexually dimorphic evolution has predisposed women to be more interested in people and males to be more interested in things. This is supported by research and has been commonly known for most of human history; you can thank 2-3 generations of postmodernist propaganda and a healthy dose of insecurity for the rabid denial of even the possibility that women are just less interested in these domains.
Men and women are different. It has consequences. To pretend otherwise is to deny reality. The evidence is overwhelming and ubiquitous, but we try desperately to handwave it away by looking for of sexism under every rock because to acknowledge these obvious truths would destroy the foundation of the modern progressive push for equity. It's insulting and purely political.
Duh? Women and men are not the same (on average, in aggregate, #NotAllWomen etc. etc.) I find this blindingly obvious and I am a woman.
It's unclear what people make of the fact that certain STEM disciplines, say Biology or other Life Sciences, have an over-representation of women. Curious why the "weeding" only occurs in certain STEM disciplines.
>especially computer science
By choice or by force? N=1, but I still remember teachers saying "all the girls that should be in CS are going to math instead, they think CS is a boys' club" despite repeatedly catering 'women in tech' and such. According to some anecdotes I heard, this also changes outside Western countries, where women pick CS much more quickly.
>statistics about women in STEM
Actual statistics would show women aren't underrepresented in STEM as a whole, or not nearly as much as people claim. This discussion keeps being raised and they conveniently omit fields which are very much science, and have far more women than men coming in. Medicine, veterinary, agriculture, biological science are all fields women tend to compete or dominate to a certain degree. See https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/16-01-2020/sb255-higher-educatio....
One of my female classmates who took an intro CS as an elective hated how the class was run. Essentially half the class was already proficient in programming and were expected to solve the problems on your own without talking. This was different than my math classes which were more likely to have female teachers and we were to work in groups to solve problems (this was how precalc was done).
She said she felt scared by the expectation to already know these things before the class begun and all the silence while working.
Unfortunate effect given that some 30 years later that social media would make tech much more universal. But this media portrayal of the "tech nerd" wasn't spread over a year and won't be solved in a year.
To actually comment on the topic at hand: the reason there's still male-dominated spaces is that women are weeded out far earlier than the hiring stage. See, for example, statistics about women in STEM and especially computer science and realize that hiring managers don't even have to be sexist for male-dominated fields to exist, even though they still are.